


Six Feet Under

by kingofghosting



Series: original character statements [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Minor Character Death, Nonbinary Character, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, The Buried - Freeform, The Paragon Association
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25810207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingofghosting/pseuds/kingofghosting
Summary: Statement no.0090705 of one Bernard Aster, regarding the deaths within Jasmine Landscaping. Statement given July 5th, 2009.--or, a statement of an original character.
Series: original character statements [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872592
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Six Feet Under

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the magnus archives](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/664330) by jonathan sims. 



> CONTENT WARNING:
> 
> Claustrophobia, death of a family member, implied bones breaking, multiple holes (literally), eye trauma, intrusive thoughts

**(STATEMENT)**

I always adored gardening and helping my parents out when I was a child. It was just busywork, nothing that a five-year-old couldn’t do, but it made me feel helpful, and that’s all I cared about.

My parents own a landscaping business called Jasmine Gardens. Or, I guess I should say owned. It’s mine, now, after they have both passed. It’s been in business since I was born. I believe it was my mother’s company, something she had been passed down from her family. My mother was a kind woman. She took me out to the piers to see the sunset, and taught me almost everything I know. It’s a shame to say I don’t really use any of that information anymore. My father did a good job when he could, but I don’t think he was ever cut out for being a parent. He cared about getting paid and looking good. Can’t say I blame him. A lot of the people who worked at that company envied him. I’d see him come in from work absolutely fuming, muttering about how “Stupid Jacob Blake is always trying to one-up me.” 

When I was eight years old, my mother disappeared. I was young, but old enough to understand that she probably wasn’t going to come home any time soon. They searched for weeks. My father didn’t give up searching, constantly going back to the police. When he wasn’t searching, he was drinking. When he was drinking, I was searching. I wasn’t allowed to leave after she went missing, but I did anyway because I loved my mother. We never found anything, and eventually, she was proclaimed dead.

The death absolutely wrecked my father. He stopped taking care of himself. He drank more, he let the dishes pile up in the sink, he let dust and grime build up in the house. It was a bad, disgusting feeling, watching your father and your house fall apart. He kept going to work though, and while he was gone I’d take care of the house. I’d scrub the drains clean, I’d do the dishes, I’d pick up the dirty clothes off the floor and do the laundry. It became routine. Eventually, my father started cleaning up the outside of the house while I tidied the inside. Some weeks we’d trade. That became normal for me.

When I turned sixteen, my father hired me within the company. He had renamed it to Jasmine Landscaping, since my mother had been the head admin of the gardening department and apparently no one else could take the job. They still offered gardening as a name, but since the company was a mainly male-dominated establishment, the feminine name had to go, I guess. I liked Jasmine Gardens. 

I liked the work at Jasmine Landscaping, really. But I couldn’t stand the majority of my coworkers. I suppose that’s normal, as mother always told father, you won’t like every person you meet. But is it normal to hate everyone you work with? Honestly, I can’t remember if I always felt this way. I know I do now. My bad thoughts overwhelm me when I stand in the breakroom to the Aster Establishment. 

I quickly learned why my father hated Jacob Blake so deeply. He was already a very flakey man, leaving jobs before they were finished and doing a shit job on properties that had infestations. But I think part of the reason he had gotten a job at Jasmine Landscaping is because of my mother. They used to be high school friends, and he was very obviously interested in her. So he got a job at her company, only for her to marry my father, Isaac. I think that’s another reason why he hated my father. Other than the fact that my father was a jerk. Jacob stopped coming to work about a year after my employment. I think I reminded him too much of her.

The jobs were fairly easy. Landscaping normally consists of garden treatment and building. Sometimes we made pathways, sometimes those cutesy circles that old women always seem to have in their backyard. Never anything that should take more than four hours. So when my father disappeared for an entire day, I knew something was wrong. I called the police, filed a missing person’s report. They looked for him for  _ three weeks.  _ Nothing. Nothing at all. Sure, my father was not a wonderful person. He was rude and bitter towards people who got in his way, and was very emotionally distant from coworkers and clients alike. Hell, he wasn’t really the kindest towards me when I came out to him as nonbinary. But he was all I had left, and I was going to find out what happened to him. 

The first place I looked was the house where he was taking a solo job. When I got there, I was utterly shocked at the disarray that the yard had been left in. The house’s windows were painted over in a thick black grime, vines crawling the bricks and obscuring parts of the walls. The bushes that lined the front of the house were unshapen and overgrown, the grass was so tall it sliced at your legs as you tried to walk through it, the trees were bending awkwardly from the untrimmed branches that scraped against the house. I walked up to the front door and knocked, not expecting an answer. There was a car in the driveway, but it was coated in rust and leaves and dirt. Just wrapping my knuckles upon the door kicked up dust, soot sticking to my hand. There was no answer, which didn’t surprise me. I saw a recently tread pathway going around the house toward the back, and a thought crossed my mind. What if it had been my father? I followed where the grass had been bent and sliced away, turning around the corner and being faced with the wooden fence of the house’s backyard. I fought with the rusty metal lock until it finally slid out of place, and the gate door creaked open loud enough to wake non existent neighbors.

The backyard was…. There was no grass. Completely clear of any green, just  dirt. It was firm under my feet as I stepped, but I still noticed how fertile it was. And all over the back yard, there were holes. Just… Holes. Varying widths and lengths and depths, all over the ground, everywhere. I called out for my father, thinking maybe he had fallen in one and needed help. I think that’s where I messed up, was making any sound. I called, cried for my father, asking him where he was. Saying I was there to help. I moved to take another step, deeper into the garden, when something snaked up and grabbed me by the ankle. I screamed, kicking at the thing that had grabbed me, but it pulled. I fell forward, knocking my head on a paving stone that bordered a patch of pine straw, where I assumed a tree was supposed to be growing. I fought for consciousness, kicking again at the thing that had me trapped. I managed to free myself and stood quickly, deciding that lying on the ground left me vulnerable. I saw a hand snake back down into the earth and I tried to back away, but I wasn’t paying attention and I fell backwards into a hole that was just my size, six feet deep. 

That’s when I fell unconscious. When I woke back up, I couldn’t breathe. Something was crushing my lungs and I couldn’t see, I couldn’t move. I tried to scream, to call for help, but the weight just got in my mouth and I quickly remembered the taste of dirt. I could feel it crushing me, my mouth tasted rich, it smelt like earth and clogged my ability to breathe, when I tried to open my eyes all I could see was a deep dark that hurt to perceive. But the sounds… the sounds made it all different. Behind the sounds of sobbing and dirt trying to shift, I heard whispers. They were quiet, but if you strained your focus loud enough, you could hear them perfectly. It wasn’t words that came from them, it wasn’t a song, but it wasn’t incomprehensible nonsense. The only words I can think of to describe it are… welcoming. Safe. Home. “Bennie,” they said, “Let it in.”

At first, I was horrified and confused. Let what in? What was I supposed to let in, how was that going to help me? I writhed and heaved, twisting and turning in an attempt to free myself. “Bennie,” the voices hissed my name, making me stop in my tracks. “You are not a worm. Stop struggling. Let them in.” Who are they? What am I letting in, why is it a ‘them’ now? I tried to open my eyes, fighting the weight that pressed hard against my face, only to hold back a scream as the dirt filled my eyes and made it so much worse. I had always gotten dirt in my eyes as a kid, but the feeling of something heavy falling into your eyes and weighing down on them was something I had never experienced until then. The voices called to me again as I cried muddy waterfalls into nothingness. 

“Bennie. Let them in. Don’t you miss your parents? They’re here, Bernard. All around you, holding you. They want inside. Let them in.”

The mention of my family was what made me understand. My father came here, and was in the dirt too. My mother must’ve been on a job when she disappeared. She was here. They were here, my parents were here. I found them. They were the dirt. I let them in.

Do you know what drowning is like, Archivist? When you can feel the water filling your stomach and filling your lungs and replacing everything inside you? That is almost what it is like to become dirt. To become whole. You let it fill every part of you that still remains air, until you are more dirt than human. Who still wants to be human, anyway? Your family goes into the ground after they’ve died. Why wait until you’re dead to join them?

You’re probably curious as to why I decided to write this. Besides sharing my experience, it… “takes a weight off my chest” to write out everything that happened. There is also a part of me that clings to humanity. Part of me that is not quite dirt, not quite buried yet. That is the part that is writing to you, telling you these things in a comprehensible manner. I do not want to be human, not anymore. Being dirt is a lot more satisfying. However, the part of me that is whole does not want to be alone. The part of me that is whole looks at my wife and my friends and tells me that they should join the dirt. That they should become whole. It is telling me that I should start with you, Archivist. 


End file.
